Imagine it’s a rainy night. And suddenly you hear a drop of water coming from the roof. One drop, two drops. Five hundred drops and a bit of mopping up later, and you’ve got a bucket under the leak. So what do you do next morning? Do you leave the buckets or do you resolve […]
How To Avoid Article Bloating: Part 2
Articles bloat. You start writing an article, expecting it to stay well within the boundaries, and then it just takes off. And about two hours later, you’re wondering where things went wrong. Why is your article looking like a dog’s breakfast? There are two reasons for article bloat Reason 1: Avoiding Outlines Reason 2: Bullet […]
Why Outlining Keeps “Article Bloating” In Check
If you were to walk into a Hollywood studio, you’d expect to see actors, lights and action, right? Right. But actors, camera and lights are expensive. So every movie director and producer on the planet does one thing: They outline. They outline the script. They outline the storyboard. They outline every darned thing that can […]
The Biggest Reason Why Your Website Content Drives Customers Away
Let’s imagine you and I are meeting in Donostia-San Sebastián in the north of Spain for dinner. And we’re going to have dinner in the old town. What are we going to have for dinner? I know. We’ll have some beer, los pintxos, some icecream, and a cafe cortado. And guess what? We’ll get the […]
Why The ‘Third Conversion’ Creates Repeat Customers
As a retailer, which is the most important sale of all? Is it the first sale, second sale, third sale or future sales? Actually the answer is: “All of the above.” But you knew that already didn’t you. What you probably didn’t know, is the importance of the third conversion. So what’s the third conversion? […]
The 70% Principle: Why You Never Get Projects Off The Ground
Have you got eleven seconds to learn a simple principle? A principle that will radically change the way you do things? You do, don’t you? Ok, tick, tick, tick….here’s the principle. It’s called..um…the 70% Principle So what’s the 70% Principle? If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing 70% right. You can always come […]
The Side Effects Of Expertise
Yes, yes, so everyone tells you you should become an expert. And yes, you know that you’ll earn more and get more customers. But there’s also a side-effect to expertise. It’s called influence. And when you’re influential, people pay attention. What do I mean? Well, read on. Here’s a letter from a company XYZ Inc. […]
Turning Tears into Gold: How to Create A Personal Marketing Success out of Pure Despair
Dylan and Rita were at their wits’ end when I met them at the World Internet Summit . By this point in their lives, they were supposed to be successful. They were supposed to be vrooming around in flaming red Ferraris, living the plush life and knocking back champagne on the harbour. Hah! They should […]
Six Degrees of Customer Separation
Consider yourself for a moment. The first time you saw either of our sites at 5000bc or Psychotactics, did you buy anything? Yeah, sure, so you signed up for a free newsletter. But did you buy? You couldn’t or wouldn’t because of the six degrees In all our testing, all our measurements and weird tracking, […]
What Kids in Third Grade Know Instinctively
Expertise is a matter of perspective. It cannot be based in years. It cannot be based on experience. It can only be based on perception. To the second grader at school, the third grader is an expert Simply because the kid in the third grade knows more stuff than the second grade kid knows. Having […]